Nigerians consume more than 5 million metric tons of rice every year,
with a significant portion of its consumption needs sourced from
imports. Rotimi Williams, an ambitious 36 year-old Nigerian entrepreneur
and rice farmer, is on a quest to change that.
Williams, a former
Journalist, is the owner of Kereksuk Rice Farm, the 2nd largest
commercial rice farm in Nigeria by land size. His farm, which is
situated in Nasarawa state in northern Nigeria, currently sits on 43,000
hectares and employs more than 100 indigenes of Nasarawa.
Forbes recently
caught up with the budding entrepreneur in Lagos, and had a brief chat
with him where he recounted his journey and mused on how Nigeria can
attain self-sufficiency in rice production in the near future.
What’s your educational and professional background?
I
attended King’s College in Lagos. After attending secondary school at
King’s College I proceeded to obtain my first degree at University of
Aberdeen where I graduated with a degree in Economics. I also obtained a
Master’s Degree in Economics from the same institution. My quest for
more knowledge led me to enroll for yet another Master’s Degree at the
School of Oriental and African Studies, London where I gained an MSc. in
Finance and Development Studies.
Upon graduation, I landed a role as
an analyst at the European Economics and Financial Centre in London.
Afterwards, Euromoney Magazine- employed me where I covered the African
space.
I would say that this is where my journey truly started.
Given your background as a journalist, what informed your decision to venture into rice farming?
While
at Euromoney, I had the opportunity to travel around a few African
countries. These trips exposed me to countries like Kenya, Rwanda,
Uganda, South Africa, Zambia and Ghana. A common thread amongst the
aforementioned nations is agriculture. Agriculture is at the very core
of these countries and this got me thinking. After a few more trips, I
decided to move back to Nigeria and sink my teeth into the agricultural
space. Nigeria remains the largest economy in Africa from both a GDP
perspective and also the strength of the size of our population.
Upon
my arrival back in Nigeria, I got a job at a premier Bank where I was
promised to sit on the agriculture desk – my hope was that I would gain
enough knowledge of the Nigerian agricultural industry and develop
myself from there.
Unfortunately, the agricultural desk at the Bank
never quite achieved its set goals. I pushed hard for the Bank to adopt
policies and gain inroads into the agricultural industry but my attempts
were somewhat frustrated. I sincerely feel that the bank wasn’t quite
ready to launch fully into the agricultural space.
As my frustration
grew, I decided to quit banking and planned to go it alone into
agriculture. Frankly, my decision led to a challenging sojourn as
attempts to raise funding with my partner proved difficult. We started a
Structured Trade and Commodity Finance company. After a while I started
consulting for small agriculture companies seeking to raise capital
both locally and internationally.
You currently own the second
(2nd) largest rice farm in Nigeria with 45,000 hectares in Nasarawa,
Nigeria. What’s the story behind your acquisition of such vast land, and
what are some of the challenges you’ve encountered in farming in the
volatile northern region?
Two years had past and we still had no
funds, so I made an offer to the farm owner, that with a 50-50 split, I
would develop the farm with both personal funds and external funding. He
agreed and that’s how I became part owner of 17,296 hectares of
farmland. Knowing that agriculture would become the integral area of
focus in Nigeria, I was bullish and ramped up the land to 55,000
hectares. I later parted with my partner as a result of unaligned views
and strategy. I maintained 45,000 hectares for myself and today we have
started producing, with our quality paddy being sold to major milling
companies in Nigeria. However, I must add the following, I often have
people ask how I learned abut farming, as everyone thinks you need a
special degree in agriculture to be a farmer, but I always tell them the
truth, I learnt it all on Google. I downloaded every article I could
find on rice production, consumed it and then practiced it in the
fields.
Frankly, my experience working alongside indigenes of
Nasarawa state has been exceptional. I have learnt over the years that
if you approach people with respect even more so while one seeks to set
up a business venture. Having a healthy sense of community makes all the
difference in attaining one’s set objectives. I lean heavily on the
wisdom and cultural approach of the indigenes to carry out farming on
such a scale here in Nasarawa.
In the news today, there is a lot of
talk about Farmers clashing with Fulani Herdsmen, but we think our
approach has been successful. We created a scheme called the Farm Out Of
Poverty initiative which I will talk about a bit more later. Under the
FOOP, we are able to train approximately a hundred Fulani women in rice
farming, at the same time, employing their men as our security and
finally, feeding their castles from the rice straws after harvest.
Today, we live in peace and all work towards the success of the farm.
What’s your fundamental objective in rice production?
In
recent years there has been a concerted effort by the Federal Republic
of Nigeria to adopt more wholesome agricultural reforms and policies.
These initiatives are highly commendable as they seek to empower
Nigerians to also engage and thrive in this industry. Quite frankly,
with Nigeria’s swelling population we simply have to look inwards and
increase our agricultural prowess as a nation. These initiatives have
been further highlighted when we take a candid look at our importing
structures. Nigeria imports a whole lot and the numbers reveal that this
is not sustainable.
Kereksuk seeks to contribute its own quota to
reduce the weight on our economy to keep importing rice – which is
consumed in such high demand in our country.
Your farm, Kereksuk, is currently not running at optimization. Why is that?
Kereksuk’s
land mass stands at 45,000 hectares; as such, we have been focusing on
developing the land in phases – based on our modular plan we seek to
reach full optimization by the year 2020. Our expansion plans require
significant fund raising too – the scale of our planned operations would
explain this.
So how much rice are you producing annually?
We’re
currently doing 8,000 metric tons a year, but we are embarking on an
expansion programme that’ll see us doubling our output next year.
Have you taken any steps to make your farm more environmentally friendly?
Kereksuk
has taken a few initiatives to adopt environmentally friendly measures.
For example, we apply organic fertilizers – fertilizers we gain quite
seamlessly through our healthy relationship with the indigenes of this
beautiful state. Furthermore, we feed straw from our rice to livestock
and while I am not at liberty to divulge the details, we are actually
working on a project that seeks to generate power from rice.
I see
myself as a social entrepreneur – I appreciate engaging the collective
through community involvement. This has actually inspired Kereksuk to
set up a few initiatives.
Our pioneer initiative is the
farm-out-of-poverty initiative. This strategic initiative targets
secondary school children. The Nigerian secondary school system is
evenly split into two halves – the Junior Secondary School (JSS) years
and the Senior Secondary School (SSS) years. Each half lasts for three
(3) years. We focus primarily on the Senior Secondary School years by
selecting ten (10) students per SSS year to visit our farm.
While on
the farm, the 30 students are exposed to the production and economics of
rice farming. At the end of the year we set aside N50,000 ($160) per
student per year. This accrues to N150,000 (approximately $500) at the
end of the 3-year programme per student. We ensure that this sum is
matched by a like-minded cooperative organization and the cumulative
amount of N300,000 ($1,000) goes towards paying fees at the tertiary
education stage.
This programme seeks to alleviate the burden of debt
often associated with students and empowers the student through
experience in a real-life work environment.
Kereksuk is confident
that this initiative inspires and acts as an incentive to those at the
lower education cadre to remain in school and aim for excellence in
life.
The second phase of the FOOP involves the engagement of Fulani
women in rice farming. This concept is unprecedented as there is a
misconception that Fulani people are only
What reforms must government implement to ensure that Nigeria attains self-sufficient in rice production?
There
is a lot of talk at the moment about rice production and
self-sufficiency, but I believe that the Government needs to look at its
approach closely. The aim of the government is not only to create jobs,
but create wealth and at the same time boost production. However, I
believe that for jobs to be created, the notion is quite
straightforward, create a plan and make funds available, however, for
such development to be sustainable and for wealth to be created, there
is much work yet to be done. For example, in rice production, simply
growing paddy and selling at market price would not create the necessary
wealth for the farmer, without appropriate value addition such as
milling. However, because the government lays much emphasis on
integrated rice mills and par-boiled rice, these small farmers are
already priced out. So for the newly created job to be truly attractive
and sustainable, government needs to start thinking about the value
additions by the same farmers to enable them grow their operations
organically.